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Girl Fighters is a novel based on a true account of two girls who passed as men and fought in Yemen's 1960's civil war. The characters in our story are two cousins who dress as males and are known as Mohammed and Ali. The men in their family have died in war. The girls feel it is their duty to seek revenge, the code of honor in tribal society. However in Yemen girls are hidden from public view--behind walls, doors, and veils. When Mohammed and Ali decide to seek revenge, they ironically violate another tribal expectation: that fighters be males. At first, Mohammed and Ali are inspired by their act of resistance. The war was compelling, a "noble cause." Later, they come to realize that war benefits corrupt political leaders and business interests, both local and international. Against the backdrop of war they gain new perspectives. Taking off veils and dressing as men opens their eyes to gender inequities. They question female roles in tribal society. For example, boys can be educated at mosques, but girls cannot attend schools. Mohammed plans to open a girl's school when the war ends. Ali is a military medic. When Ali is killed, Mohammed confronts loss and guilt. She cannot return to her former life. The dream of educating girls cannot happen as a "man." In tribal society, as "a woman" she must marry and produce children. Against the odds, Mohammed reshapes her life as leader in the community.

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Sidney Reilly was the most audacious, courageous, and successful spy in history. His adventures first came to light during the Russian Revolution in 1917 when he was tasked by Britain’s Secret Service with overthrowing the Bolsheviks after they had formed a new government. He had already succeeded in stealing the plans of the Kaiser’s new and modern fleet of battleships from Krupp, to help Britain win World War I, and was awarded the Military Cross in 1919. In 1953, novelist Ian Fleming used Reilly’s secret Admiralty Intelligence file to write his novels about a fictional secret agent he called James Bond 007. But Reilly’s true exploits were even more thrilling and fantastic than those of the fictional James Bond. Reilly was Britain’s best spy—but was he also a Soviet double-agent? Author John Harte retells Reilly’s story as it really was, in fast-moving prose with an eye for telling detail—and provides a twist: He tells us what really happened to Reilly after he vanished in Soviet Russia in 1925 and was assumed to have been murdered by Stalin’s secret police. Apparently not! .

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Twenty-five paintings by Helen Zughaib accompanied by text based on favorite stories told by her father about life in Syria and Lebanon in the 1930s and during World War II.

Helen's father was born in the Old Quarter of Damascus during Ottoman times, when Le Grande Syrie included the lands that are now demarked as Syria and Lebanon. His father and mother, first cousins in an arranged marriage, were from the villages of Zahle and Durer Shweir in the Lebanese mountains.

"Let me tell you a story," Helen's father used to say. What followed were absorbing tales of her father's childhood in Damascus, village life in Lebanon in the late 1930s, amusing relatives, happenings the traditions of in their local Greek Orthodox Church, and major events in her father's young life that lead him to emigrate to the United States in 1946.

Helen Zughaib is an award-winning artist who has developed a distinctive technique working in gouache and ink. She was born in Beirut and, educated in the Middle East, Paris, and the US. She is currently based in Washington.

Zughaib uses folkloric elements and a wide variety of other visual references to express the life and outlook of her family, the village community of her father's young adult life, and her position as an international woman with special insight and empathy for the Middle East and its people.

Critics note the parallels between Zughaib's work as an artist with Arab roots to the art of contemporary "Native, Latin, and African American communities." (Maymanah Farhat)

For More:
Cultural Understanding in the Art of Helen Zughaib (by Maymanah Farhat)
www.onefineart.com/articles/helen-zughaib

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Refugees from the Middle East and Asia who have fled famine and violence and resettled in the US too often are isolated, disconnected, living in despair. Will their lives disintegrate?

Enter a group of ordinary Americans who recognized the need, created a solution, got results—and found their own lives uplifted in the process.

Author Patricia Martin Holt reports on Peace of Thread, a non-profit founded by Denise Smith, who lived near Atlanta and had previously learned Arabic during six years of mission work in Lebanon. Smith befriended refugee women and built on the fabric skills that many women brought with them.

Now the women are creating handbags and accessories and selling them on ESTY and in several specialty shops. They have new confidence, feel more at home, and are finding purpose in their lives.

Patricia Martin Holt demonstrates that good-hearted people can overcome the national climate of fear and bigotry toward refugees. It turns out that we can work for world peace simply by lending a hand to those in need—in the same cities, counties, and neighborhoods where we live.

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[Available in fall of 2020 in hardcover]

The guns in Aleppo have fallen silent. At some point, the Syrian civil war of bombs and bullets and the interior war of one ideology against another will come to an end. Then, Syrians of all stripes will look to their common heritage to rebuild their society.

Aleppo may be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. Its ancient Citadel, covered market, and Umayyad mosque are UNESCO World Heritage sites.

In this "children's book for adults," a long time resident of Aleppo takes a tour of the old quarter and provides historical sketches and photos for those who value what was lost and are eager to see the treasures of Aleppo rebuilt and a vigorous civil society restored.

(This hardcover has the same content as the paperback version with the title Visit the Old City of Aleppo. The hardcover name was altered to facilitate national distribution.)

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